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I think it's not actually about becoming more powerful, but about being obscure. Long before Cambridge Analytica, presidents were still winning handily by hacki

I think it's not actually about becoming more powerful, but about being obscure. Long before Cambridge Analytica, presidents were still winning handily by hacking the electorate with expert use of mass media. Kennedy dominated television and won. Before him, it was Roosevelt on the radio. The trouble is that like any other virus, people build up an immunity to the tricks on established platforms. You're not going to see another Kennedy or Roosevelt using the techniques they used, and it'll even be difficult to pull what Cambridge Analytica did now that that cat's out of the bag. If you want to remain as effective as them you need to keep pushing and capitalize on the next mass media platform before people realize what you're doing.

maxxxxx 9y ago
What scares me is that a large number of very bright people nowadays work at places like Google, Facebook and others whose ultimate business model is to hack people's psychology to entice them to buy more stuff. What they are working on will be the perfect toolkit for dictators to manipulate people.
- indigochill 9y ago
  Advertisers have been doing this as long as there have been advertisers. One that really blows some people's mind (although it's reasonably well-known by now) is that although hardly anyone thinks twice about a diamond engagement ring, the notion we have of diamond rings today was invented by advertisers in the 1940s: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho... Similarly, Americans will ask for a Kleenex even when they don't actually mean a Kleenex-brand tissue. I didn't even think twice about this until I moved to Europe and it was pointed out how weird that was. It's true the big tech companies make it easier to target segments of people by collecting data, but pervasive mass manipulation is hardly new or unique to big tech companies and generally it doesn't need nearly the amount of data that they collect. People are generally similar enough to each other psychologically that you can paint with broad strokes like demographics and still hit most of your target (and interestingly, some of the most viral memes have no particularly targeted message).

maxxxxx 9y ago

What scares me is that a large number of very bright people nowadays work at places like Google, Facebook and others whose ultimate business model is to hack people's psychology to entice them to buy more stuff. What they are working on will be the perfect toolkit for dictators to manipulate people.

indigochill 9y ago
Advertisers have been doing this as long as there have been advertisers. One that really blows some people's mind (although it's reasonably well-known by now) is that although hardly anyone thinks twice about a diamond engagement ring, the notion we have of diamond rings today was invented by advertisers in the 1940s: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho... Similarly, Americans will ask for a Kleenex even when they don't actually mean a Kleenex-brand tissue. I didn't even think twice about this until I moved to Europe and it was pointed out how weird that was. It's true the big tech companies make it easier to target segments of people by collecting data, but pervasive mass manipulation is hardly new or unique to big tech companies and generally it doesn't need nearly the amount of data that they collect. People are generally similar enough to each other psychologically that you can paint with broad strokes like demographics and still hit most of your target (and interestingly, some of the most viral memes have no particularly targeted message).